Last week I wrote about how effective web design should be the first focus of your over-all Internet Marketing plan, this week I want to address SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is essentially the process of ‘optimizing’ your web site to be easily digested by the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.  When we talk about optimization, there are really TWO distinct areas that we address: On Site SEO and off site SEO. I’ll break down some components of the On Site SEO here and then discuss Off site SEO in one of my next posts.

On Site SEO

The true key to ANY successful organic SEO campaign is this: What keywords will your PROSPECTS use to search for your products or services? NOT what keywords you as the owner are going to search for.  Knowing the popularity of the keywords is crucial to your success.  Keywords may also be lumped into key phrase searches, the point is this: we as a company, need to know your market and research what the average client would search for and then incorporate those key words / key phrases into the structure and design of the web site. A true SEO marketer is a wordsmith.  They retain the rare ability to incorporate keywords into copy without the reader even realizing.  Further, in my humble opinion, True SEO focuses on usability (your prospects & clients) first, search engines secondly.

On Site SEO is mainly concerned with anything we may physically alter on your web site to help you increase your rankings in the search engines.  Some of the many considerations are:

Copy: Copy is the food to the search engine spider.  No copy, no food, no reason for the search engine to come back.  One common mistake we see: your web designer creates all of the copy in a graphic format.  Search Engines can’t read graphics, so, there is nothing to attract them.

Meta tags: There is a great misunderstanding on the Internet about meta tags.  Meta tags are simply some descriptors used to tell Google and the other search engines that this is what this page is about. Meta tags are created within the code of your web site and can only be seen by viewing the source of the web site.  Back in the day, meta tags carried a lot more weight than they do now, especially the meta keyword tag.  People have spammed the search engines so much by ‘stuffing’ keywords into these fields that many search engines (including Google) do not put forth much weight on the tags themselves.  The meta description tag is what is displayed when a Google user ‘googles’ your web site.

Title Tags: The title tag can be seen at the very top of your browser: this tag tells the Search engines and your site visitors what the particular page is about.  We, as a best practice, strive to create individual and unique title tags for each page.  The title tag is typically displayed in the search engine results, so it is important to create a compelling title with relevant keywords.

Site Map: We create a custom site map that we feed to the search engines.  It is known as an XML sitemap and gives the major search engines all of the links to your web site in one handy location.

Internal Linking Structure: This is a biggie for SEO as well.  If we have a confusing internal navigation structure, we will confuse the search engine as well.  Search engines need to easily crawl each page of your web site so it is imperative that we make it easy for the robots / spiders to do so.  This of course, ties in with the initial design of the web site.

Images & ALT Tags / H1 tags etc. : So many people labor over these elements with SEO, in my humble opinion, use em’ if you can to enhance your keywords / keyphrases / content, but don’t labor over them.  The jury is out on how much weight is actually placed on these, based upon my experience, I do not put a ton of stock into these elements.  They were far more important years ago, but as the search engines evolve to level the playing fields, they put more emphasis on different variables.

Content, Content, Content. : Search engines are competing for YOUR attention.  If they are dishing up non-relevant, non current results to the searcher, the searcher finds another search engine that DOES provide relevant and fresh results.  Keep this in mind when building your web site…. If you are not keeping your web site relevant and up to date, Google (for example) see’s no need to keep coming back to your web site.  A blog (which we will discuss later) is a great tool to add quality, fresh and relevant information to your web site.

Ongoing: Work on organic SEO doesn’t or should not stop.  Google is constantly changing, your industry is constantly changing: staying on top of your keywords and current rankings involves analyzing data and taking appropriate actions including, but not limited to: adjusting keywords, adding copy, tweaking copy, adding blog entries, optimizing blog entries etc.

Incorporating SEO into your ongoing Internet Marketing plan can accomplish the following for your business:

Credibility: if your company is found high in the organic search engine rankings, people tend to believe you have to be legit (if only this was actually the case all the time!)

Targeted Traffic: We seek quality targeted traffic, i.e., your demographic visiting your web site looking for the products that you sell RIGHT NOW.

Expertise: I was asked to appear on national television to discuss social media because The Daily Buzz found my web site in Google under Orlando Social Media Expert. You truly can’t pay for publicity like that.

Want to learn more? Give my office a call: 407-830-4550, my team will schedule some time for us to discuss your current Internet Marketing plan: NO obligation to you.

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Tags: Search Engine Optimization, seo